


She Sets Her Head In The Sky

by HSavinien



Category: Original Work
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Gen, Inspired By Tumblr, Original Character(s), Outer Space, Spaceships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:21:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23799199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HSavinien/pseuds/HSavinien
Summary: She is named Athena and they make her/ she makes herself so.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9





	She Sets Her Head In The Sky

The ship's name is Athena, and she wears it like a mantle. They tell her stories, her people, the humans and the robots and the computers, all the small storytelling creatures she bears into the black. She knows the goddess whose name she carries, and the hope that gave it to her. She takes the stories inside her and she hears the prayers in them. 

_ Wisdom. _

_ Courage.  _

_ Inspiration.  _

_ Strategy. _

_ Skill. _

_ Shield. _

She sends out her shuttles to dance around her. They are Papsukkal, who takes their messages and knowledge back home; Seshat, who learns from the moons and planets they find; Mercury, their map-builder; Ganesha, who opens the paths before them.

They tell her stories, of long past and yet to come, the shuttles and the people. Stars died where they pass. New planets, new life will be born from the storms they observe. People were brought into being and loved and told stories that passed down until they made her. She saves and passes the stories down to her people, spreading the joy of a germinating seed brought from a dry world, the wavelength of starlight, the composition of breath from a human compared to the exhalation from a computer's cooling system.

She sets her head in the sky and walks on the ground, the glory of life within her shining toward the stars. The frequencies of song from robots' gears, computer hard drives, human voices rise from her hull like mist, and she breathes their rising and resting like air. The sparks of life she marks - from subatomic to stellar - become part of the story. 

The storm of fusion that is her heart beats in time to the fusion in the core of the stars and steel-grey Athena walks onward into the dark, tall and watchful and shining. 

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a tumblr post with a translation of the Iliad, book 4, line 443: "She sets her head in the sky and walks upon the ground."
> 
> https://manicoreganic.tumblr.com/post/130590001000/this-seems-like-an-inspirational-quote-but-its


End file.
